Birmingham appearing on maps since before the 2022 Commonwealth Games

There was some confusion this week after journalists claimed that this year’s Commonwealth Games have really put Birmingham on the map. Literal minded Reading resident Elsie Glovebox popped to check the Reader’s Digest AA Book Of The Road and found Birmingham was there, as she’d remembered it was, having looked at it many years ago when she and husband Stanley had used it when first visiting Stan’s sister Maureen who lives in King’s Heath.

Maureen was asked to comment and said Birmingham always appears on the weather map and incidentally, she’s delighted that King’s Heath is now a gay village, and wasn’t that Tony Iommi good on the opening ceremony, she hopes to see a bit more of him in the closing ceremony.

photo: https://pixabay.com/users/beansandsausages-15282139/

Spaghetti Junction now Commonwealth Games event

The Sorry-about-all-that-Empire-business (still, we can laugh about it now - right guys? Guys?) Games are poised to adopt some new demonstration sports for Birmingham 2022 including:

Spaghetti Junction - individual and relay races through the notorious motorway intersection. Points will be deducted for accidentally entering Wolverhampton. Reaching West Bromwich will result in automatic disqualification.

Match the member of the Royal Family with the correct sexual practice - a timed event involving imagination, the ability to suppress disgust and avoid tabloid censorship. Competitors should bring their own pegs.

Where's Liz Truss - a variant on Where's Wally where Liz Truss is a wally and competitors have to find her and deliver her to be interviewed by Andrew Neil.

One organiser noted 'It's no weirder than having crown green bowls.'

Image: Unsplash/Denys Nevozhai

Thomas the Tank Engine: 'Scrap HS2 white elephant madness now'

The nation's favourite tank engine, Thomas, has steamed into the HS2 controversy, slamming the proposed super railway scheme "a cash-guzzling preposterous government white elephant."

'Toot-toot,' said an incandescent Thomas. 'This shambles is possibly the stupidest thing I have ever heard of. The government can deny it all they like, but if you ask me, it reeks of another Grayling cock-up. I thought Boris had binned him.'

Meanwhile, model railway enthusiast and scary loner Nigel Protheroe is offering to create a gigantic model railway showpiece in HS2's place.

Wearing a pre-Beeching 1960s Stationmaster's hat, Mr Protheroe said: 'I can set up a quite spectacular layout for no more than twenty thousand pounds in mum's garden, which, believe me, will be just as much a practical benefit to our nation as HS2.

'Look, in the highly unlikely event that I should ever wish to get from London to Birmingham half an hour sooner, then all I would do is catch a train departing thirty minutes earlier. It really is that simple.'

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​Roman opposition to HS2 found in Stoke Mandeville	in hardback and paperback	Last of the "Downing Street Image Touslers" retires